Editor Jason Maoz goes after Jewschool.com:
Last week the left-wing blogger Mobius (the alias used by Dan Sieradski in his role as proprietor of the Jewschool blog) reacted with some indignation to Steven Plaut’s inaugural post on this blog. That’s Mobius’s right, of course, and I have no issue with that. My problem is with his predictably dishonest characterization of The Jewish Press. After dispensing with the obligatory insult (he calls us “America’s trashiest Orthodox Jewish newspaper”), he writes that the paper is “renowned for excusing the improprieties of rabbinic child molesters and instead attacking their whistleblowers…”
How dishonest is Mobius? The Jewish Press has never — not once — excused any abuser or molester, rabbinic or otherwise. The fact is, the paper has for years run articles, columns and features on all manner of abuse in the Orthodox community — in the face of a number of cancelled subscriptions and threats of advertiser boycotts by people who don’t think an Orthodox newspaper should publicize such sordid reality. (In fact, it was in response to reader discomfort that the paper several years ago moved articles of that nature into a pullout section so that concerned parents could easily separate it from the rest of the paper.)
Mobius’s disingenuousness is further indicated by his use of a hyperlink when he refers to The Jewish Press’s attacks on whistleblowers — but not when he refers to our alleged “excusing…of rabbinic child molesters. ” The reason for that should be obvious — he can’t find any such link.
While the paper has indeed editorialized against granting legitimacy to anonymous accusations and anonymous fliers containing unsubstantiated charges, it has, as noted above, never excused abuse or abusers. But by placing that lie in the same sentence with the hyperlinked reference to our editorial stance against anonymous accusations, Mobius plants the impression in readers’ minds that both statements are accurate.
That Mobius knows better can be ascertained by his own words. Last May, The Jewish Press ran an op-ed piece, written by a concerned New Jersey mother, titled “Education Without Strings.” The article minced no words in criticizing yeshivas on a variety of fronts — including their lack of accountability in hiring teachers with questionable backgrounds.
Here’s a relevant section of the piece: “We are all aware of the current controversies involving teachers with questionable backgrounds — controversies that often include allegations of verbal, physical, and sexual abuse. Why are we exposing our children to teachers who have been accused but not investigated? What if allegations about an individual teacher happen to be true and our children are being abused under our very noses? Why isn‚Äôt someone stepping up and saying this is unacceptable? Why are parents who complain about a teacher‚Äôs abusive behavior to school authorities likely to be told, ‘If you don‚Äôt like it here, go to another yeshiva’?
“Who is seeing to it that allegations are investigated rather than swept under the rug? Why are community members using anonymous public letters as a last resort to bring attention to the matter? Anonymous letters can get out of hand and hurt innocent people. If we had a central, objective committee to whom we could turn, these problems would be addressed without the need to resort to extreme measures. Does anyone doubt that if a string of accountability were tied to school funding, things like this would no longer go on?”
Two days after the article first appeared on our website and in our print edition, Mobius posted the following comment on his blog, followed by a link to the article in question:
Demanding Accountability From Yeshivot by Mobius // May 26th, 2006 Education My sister L‚Äôvia wrote an op-ed in this week‚Äôs Jewish Press, which, responding to the recent Kolko controversy, presents a laundry list of concerns from Orthodox parents about how their money‚Äôs being spent and who‚Äôs being allowed to teach their children…
Well, who’d have thunk it? Leave aside the delicious irony that the writer of the article we were glad to run happened to be Mobius’s very own sister. Did you notice that Mobius himself made the point that the piece was a response “to the recent Kolko controversy”? And how come he didn’t call us “America’s trashiest Orthodox Jewish newspaper” when he was trumpeting our publication of his sister’s article?
If Mobius were sincere, and even if he knew nothing else about The Jewish Press (which of course he does), just the fact that we would feature an article like the one written by his sister should have been enough to disabuse him of any notion that we were interested in whitewashing or “excusing” abuse in the Orthodox community. In fact, I can’t think of any other mainstream Orthodox publication that would have published his sister’s article. And her piece was only one of dozens we’ve run in recent years addressing problems all too many Orthodox Jews would rather ignore.
But what do I know? I’m just the senior editor of “America’s trashiest Orthodox Jewish newspaper” (the one that ran the article by Mobius’s sister that Mobius was only too proud to plug).
